DIANA MALLORY 147

had somehow engulfed the horrors; and had spread its
quiet waves above them, under a pale, late-bom sun-
shine. The stoicism of the poor rebuked her, as she
thought of the sharp impatience and disappointment
in which she had parted from Mrs. Colwood,

She seemed to hear her father's voice. * No shirking,
Diana! You asked her—you formed absurd and exag-
gerated expectations. She is here ; and she is not re-
sponsible for your expectations. Make the best of her,
and do your duty 1'

And eagerly the child's heart answered, 'Yes, yes
Papa 1—dear Papa I *

And, there, sharp in colour and line, it rose on the
breast of memory, the beloved face. It set pulses beat-
ing in Diana, which from her childhood onwards had
been a life within her life, a pain answering to pain, the
child's inevitable response to the father's misery, always
discerned, never understood.

This abiding remembrance of a dumb unmitigable
grief, beside which she had grown up, of which she had
never known the secret, was indeed one of the main
factors in Diana's personality. Muriel Colwood had at
once perceived it; Marsham had been sometimes puzzled
by the signs of it.

To-day,—because of Panny, and this toppling of her
dreams,—the dark mood, to which Diana was always liable,
had descended heavily upon her. She had no sooner re-
buked it,—by the example of the poor,—or the remem-
brance of her father's long patience,—than she was torn
by questions, vehement, insistent, full of a new anguish,

"Why had her fether been so unhappy ? What was
the meaning of that cloud, under which she had grown
up?

She had repe&ted to Muriel Golwood the stock explan-
she^had been accustomed to give herself of the